Thursday, February 17, 2011

Democracy Movement in Full Flower in Madison: Next Stop, Columbus

From Brian LeCloux, who posted this at ARN:

I was at the rally today for 11 hours. Awesome!

There were 5,000 inside the State Capitol from the early morning on, chanting "this is what democracy looks like" and "Recall Walker", singing "We Shall Overcome" and shouting "We Got Democracy, Yes We Do, We Got Democracy
how about you" and "We are Wisconsin" and "Kill this Bill" This went on for hours and was driven by a great crew
of drummers and protest leaders. At one point an American flag was unfurled stretching the width of the Capitol Rotunda as we sang. Very emotional for all involved.

Outside 20,000 were marching around the capitol building.

The firefighters and police, who are not affected by Walker's anti democratic moves, joined us in solidarity today.
That brought perhaps the biggest cheers from the crowd other than the announcement that
Senate Dems had left the state.

Students marched around the capitol as well in a large contingent with one group carrying a lengthy banner
with the word "Collective" followed by another with "Bargaining."

For the speeches at night the crowd swelled well beyond the 20,000 earlier in the day.

Nation magazine writer John Nichols gave a rousing speech asking us to look around at each and tellingus this is what democracy looks like. Mary Bell our WEAC president spoke. I thought the messaging could have been better. She said this isn't about the money. Actually it is. Walker gave out tax breaks and now has to cover for that by cutting our benefits. His claim that we have a budget deficit is false.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL CIO will be speaking in Madison tomorrow at noon. The fight continues.